Florida Foodie Florida Podcast Network

Quinisha “Q” Bredwood took a big risk opening her restaurant, Q’s Crackin Crab & Seafood Kitchen, in Cocoa Beach right at the height of the pandemic.
“We found a building at the end of January (2020) and then we were negotiating our lease from January to February,” Bredwoood said. “And we were watching our friend who was in China as a teacher and talking about this pandemic. I was like, ‘That’s not gonna happen.’”
Of course, it did happen. The pandemic forced the whole world to shut down and, in Bredwood’s case, kept her from opening at all.
“I was like, ‘What did we just do?’” Bredwood said. “Anthony (Bredwood’s husband) was like, ‘You know what? We got the money already spent. We negotiated four months of free rent. So let’s just watch out and look at everything, but we don’t have to open right away.’”
Eventually, Q’s Crackin’ Crab was able to open on Fourth of July weekend 2020.
The restaurant has a prime location, nestled between Cocoa Beach Pier and Port Canaveral. The menu also offers more than just run-of-the-mill seafood.
“I call it soulful seafood because it’s like I throw in our soul food, but it’s like our still Florida-style seafood with the garlic butter and the Cajun seasoning and stuff like that,” Bredwood said.
She said the community has embraced her and her business.
“It feels weird living in the dream that you had once you know and now you’re in it. So it’s great,” Bredwood said.
It’s a community Bredwood grew up in, having lived all over Brevard County.
“I moved a lot growing up,” she said. “So I went to three different high schools. So I have relationships at Cocoa High, Rockledge High and I graduated from Satellite (Beach) High. I know everyone.”
Having grown up in the community, Bredwood now looks to support it, especially the young people she hires as employees.
“A lot of times, they don’t have the experience and they don’t know how to deal with adversity or tough situations,” she said. “So we’re teaching them a lot. My husband played football, and so he has that structure. So we have a lot of football players that work with us. We’re coaching them a lot of time.”
Beyond supporting her young employees, Bredwood is also raising seven girls of her own as well. Her children range in age from nearly 1 year old to 19.
“I stay at home during the week with two of them. Then my 14-year-old is in high school. My 19-year-old is in college. She’s a manager at the restaurant. She works on the weekends. I stay at home during the week with the baby and my 4-year-old because we’re trying to find a new school for her,” she said.
On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Bredwood talks more about balancing her family with her business. She also shares how her business has changed since it opened and the awards she’s received.
Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chef Ian Russell and his wife, Juliana Peña, could not agree on whether to open a donut shop or a barbecue restaurant.
So, like in any good relationship, they compromised and decided to try both, creating Smoke & Donuts.
“We had no idea that the response was going to be what it was,’ Russell said. “It was a donut and barbecue concept and when we google donut and barbecue back then — you punched into Google and nothing came up. It didn’t Google. There was nothing when you punch donuts and barbecue, barbecue and doughnuts into Google. And so that’s either — well it could be terrifying because you have a really bad idea or it’s a good idea right and nobody else’s was doing it.”
The pair first took their idea on the road as a pop-up “in the back alley of a Winter Springs brewery.”
"We sold out fast — that’s what happened,” Russells said. “That’s kind of why we — that’s how it continued forward. That’s how the inertia of the concept of the two ideas going together moved forward because at our first event, we sold out and really fast.”
The pair’s success continued and they kept moving forward, despite juggling full-time jobs on top of their pop-ups.
“It’s tiring, but the response from the Orlando community was so encouraging, so exciting, so invigorating, that it kept pushing us forward,” Russell said.
Even with continued success over the last six year — recently opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant in Orlando’s trendy Milk District — Peña still works in a regular job.
“My wife still has her day job. You know, we’re not to a point yet where we’re, able to just roll without any kind of standard income,” Russell said.
Despite that, Russell said his goal is to make his customers happy.
“We want people to eat barbecue and doughnuts and when they visit us have fun for a little bit and have a good time. And that’s it. That’s the goal. A little bit of joy in the middle of your day,” he said.
While the concept is barbecue and donuts, Russell said their goal is not to force people to indulge in both together, unless they want to — in which case, there is are barbecue and donut sandwiches on the menu.
“Often at a restaurant, the donuts will be ready first. And so 50% of the time at least, we start with dessert at our restaurant,” he said.
Russell himself is a classically trained chef, getting his education at the Culinary Institute of America. When the business was starting out, he was also making all of the donuts but eventually decided to hire someone more qualified in that department.
“I kind of BS my way through it a little bit,” he said. Then at one point, this classically trained pastry chef reached out to me and sent me an email that said, ‘Hey, I’m interested in working with you on the donut side,’ and I kind of didn’t pay attention to her in the beginning. She sent me another email and this one had pictures in it. She even put pictures of a donut that she made that had flames on it. So I hired her.”
On the latest Florida Foodie, Russell shares more about his early years with the business and his culinary journey before striking out on his own. He also talks about all of the specialty donuts he has available and his favorite barbecue item on the menu.
Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Executive pastry chef Josh Cain credits his great aunt with fostering his sweet tooth.
“For me, chocolate and sweets is something that I didn’t realize until I got older, that I did this a lot with my great aunt,” Cain said. “My grandmother was cooking, but my great aunt was the one who always made all of the desserts and I was right there, helping her out.”
Cain later graduated from Johnson and Wales culinary school in North Carolina to pursue his career as a pastry chef, eventually making his way to Caribe Royale in Orlando.
While Cain makes a variety of sweet treats, he has a deep passion for chocolate.
He has become known for creating elaborate displays out chocolate, such as a 32-foot-long model train and an 11-foot-tall replica of a Saturn V rocket.
“I actually make molds as well,” Cain said. “So if I want to make something out of chocolate, and I maybe I want it to have certain details, I’ll create my own molds. So I use silicone, I use different thermoforming techniques to make different plastic molds and stuff like that to create what I want to out of chocolate.”
For the model train, Cain said he used 1,600 pounds of chocolate.
The chef said the most stressful part of making these massive confections is moving them.
“The biggest thing with that is it really, that’s when everybody comes around and gets in your way,” he said.
Cain added that he works to make sure his large-scale displays will last, some as long as eight years.
“I build these things really substantial so that they can last the test of time,” he said.
While his enormous creations are a quite the sight, Cain is bringing something even more unique to Caribe Royale; a proprietary chocolate formal that will only be found at the resort.
“In October, I was I had the chance to go to France and the company I was with, they approached me. They said ‘Hey,would you be interested in formulating your own Chocolate?,’” Cain said. “I pitched it to my boss. And he’s like, ‘That sounds amazing. Like who’s doing that around here?’”
The chef described the trip as a fully immersive experience.
“It’s really cool. So we start the process, we work on the flavor profiles, we take those and then we kind of start a formula,” Cain said.
The formula then went through several revisions before he landed on a product he was happy with.
“The one that I actually landed on was it had beans from Venezuela and Madagascar. It has a really nice flavor profile and what I was trying to do is tie in what happens in Central Florida, what grows in Central Florida, and some of those notes,” he said. “So they have a lot of fruity notes, red berry kind of notes — kind of like Plant City strawberries — citrus notes, the honey that goes along with that. So I wanted to kind of tie that into my chocolate so it really brings it all home for what we have in Central Florida.”
In addition to this special chocolate formula, Caribe Royale is also expanding its chocolate-making facilities.
“I’m working on expanding that to make it where we can do actual classes and bring guests and they can pay to take these classes and come see what we do and create these things,”
On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Cain explains more about the different kinds of chocolate and how he uses them in his work. He also shares some of his favorites from Caribe Royale.
Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wess St. Victor started making barbecue the same way many people do, right in his backyard.
“What happened was my backyard — love my wife, she just kept buying me different types of smokers, different types of grills,” St. Victor said. “So it got to the point that my backyard started looking like ‘Sanford and Son.’”
At the time, he was working as an exterminator, but St. Victor was also bringing his barbecue to friends and family.
“A couple of guys at work told me, they’re like, ‘Why are you killing bugs? You need to be doing barbecue,’” he said. “That’s when this whole thing got started — like testing out different things at work. For the Fourth of July, like not like 95% of my church was in my backyard.”
St. Victor eventually took his barbecue on the road, creating St. Vic’s Smoke Shack.
“We started out — my son and I started out — at just a couple of pit barrels at a gas station,” he said. “Then from that point on we progressed through getting a food truck and we’ve been running the food truck for a little bit over seven years.”
Through his food truck, St. Victor built a loyal following of customers.
“A lot of folks was like our flavors are very different from what you were accustomed to with barbecue because we introduced a lot of like our Caribbean heritage in our barbecue,” he said.
In October, St. Victor decided to make the jump from a food truck to a brick-and-mortar location. St. Vic’s Smoke Shack now sits at 1858 North Orange Blossom Trail, near the intersection with Princeton. The area is seeing a lot of development as Orlando’s Packing District grows up around the area. John Rivers, the owner of 4 Rivers, is also opening his 4 Roots farm nearby.
While the area is expected to grow rapidly, St. Victor has said the transition to a permanent location has come with some “hiccups.”
“We moved into a new area( where) nobody really knows us. You know, it’s not what it used to be over there (along Orange Blossom Trail) but we are building up,” he said.
St. Victor credits his success so far to building relationships with his customers.
“I have developed a relationship with most of my customers,” he said. “We know each other’s names, they ask me about the kids about the wife. I know about them and their children and so on and so forth. So it’s — essential you’re building a family.”
St. Victor knows a lot about family, as he and his wife are parents to eight children. He credits his wife with keeping their household running.
“I am extremely lucky. I married a wonderful woman. So not only does she balance 95% of all that stuff (the household), she also homeschools all of them as well, too,” he said. “She runs the whole house and will take pressure off of me for me to go to work — because I also have another job and they run this business.”
On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, St. Victor talks about working with his children at the business. He also talks about what makes his barbecue stand out from the rest.
Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Food Network star Guy Fieri made a stop at his Winter Park restaurant Chicken Guy! on Wednesday, announcing a big expansion of the businesses footprint.
The mayor of Flavortown had several pieces of business to attend to while making his visit.
“I live in Northern California, I also have a house in West Palm Beach — So, I’m going to be spending a lot more time in Florida,” Fieri said. “This (Winter Park location) is the beginning of the growth. We wanted to make sure that we had this thing dialed in and really know all the ins and outs of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it to make sure that what we’re going to give people on a national level was going to be outstanding. But we have 80 franchises that are already ready to go. It’s going to go loud and fast.”
Florida Foodie co-host Candace Campos was there and got the chance to talk with Fieri and his business partner Robert Earl about the franchise and its future growth.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Katherine Franco has experienced food insecurity in her own life.
She spent the first ten years of her life in the Dominican Republic, where she said members of the community always watched out for each other and ensured no one went hungry.
“And then coming here (to the U.S.), my mom didn’t have much,” Franco said. “(It was) just my mom, her two kids — we were having issues with housing. My mom had to work overnight, all the time. It was just like, we would get what she could give us.”
That experience of going without pushed her toward helping others in need.
“I want to be able to build a space where people who are struggling from food insecurity can have access to these healthy foods because there are so many things that take into effect when you’re not properly being fed,” she said. “Like mental health issues — being overweight comes with a bunch of other issues. So I just want to be part of the movement that brings that resource to people that really need it.”
That desire to help others led Franco to start the Neighborhood Fridge. The fridge sits behind the Laundromart, 5065 Edgewater Drive, and is accessible 24/7.
“The goal was to target underserved communities,” Franco said. “And then I thought of like, ‘Who do I know that owns a business?’ And I thought if my friend Sean (Nelson). I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, a laundromat would be great.’”
Nelson and his family own the laundromat and agreed to host the Neighborhood Fridge.
“We need to try and give back as much as we can and not just think about ourselves,” Nelson said in February when the fridge first opened.
“The goal was to target underserved communities,” Franco said. “And then I thought of like, ‘Who do I know that owns a business?’ And I thought if my friend Sean (Nelson). I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, a laundromat would be great.’”
Nelson and his family own the laundromat and agreed to host the Neighborhood Fridge.
“We need to try and give back as much as we can and not just think about ourselves,” Nelson said in February when the fridge first opened.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices